


Blóde Fáh

by TheDruidIsIn



Category: Red Riding Hood (2011)
Genre: Alternate Ending, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Dark, Angst, Dark Character, Dark Valerie, F/M, No Incest, No Sex, No Smut, Past Valerie/Peter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-04
Updated: 2021-03-04
Packaged: 2021-03-17 21:29:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,213
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29847774
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheDruidIsIn/pseuds/TheDruidIsIn
Summary: In which Valerie makes a different decision.
Kudos: 1





	Blóde Fáh

**Author's Note:**

> This is a short, dark 'what if' of what would happened if Valerie made a different decision.

_ Blóde Fáh _ : Old English for ‘Stained with Blood’, aka ‘Bloodstained’

...

_ I wanna taste the way that you bleed, oh  
You're my kill of the night _

\-- Gin Wigmore _ , Kill of the Night  
  
_

...

  
  


The soup sat cooling in its bowl, forgotten. Valerie stared at her father from wide, vivid blue eyes, her lips bloodless. Her father leaned forward in his seat, his tunic rustling. He took her hands in his own, his voice soft as he implored her. “Valerie, Little Wolf, please come with me.” He used the nickname he had for her that now made  _ far _ more sense in context. How foolish to think it had been about her wildness! Or perhaps it had, but she had misplaced the source of that wildness. “Run at my side as my pack.” He brushed his lips across her knuckles. “Come with me, darling, please.”

“I won’t kill,” she told him, bottom lip trembling, “not a human, not unless I have to. I can’t—I won’t do what you did.”

The fire crackled in the hearth, casting dancing shadows over the wooden floors, and giving her father’s eyes an odd glint. As she watched, they shifted colors, flashing amber, and she realized with a start that no, the fire didn’t cause the glint, it magnified it. 

“You can,” he whispered calmly, “You have. You just don’t remember. When you were a child, what did you think happened to the little baker’s boy, Collin?”

Valerie sobbed harshly, pushing down the images that flooded her mind: flashes of playing that turned into squabbling, then tears and pain as a young blond boy pushed her down onto her ass in her mind’s eye, and she responded in kind—only, when she pushed  _ him _ , his head smacked into a rock, hot blood gushing out onto the snow like spilled liquid rubies, and he lay still; her father finding her some time later, cold, shivering, hiding—not judging her, not yelling as he saw the bloodstains soaking her dress or the dead boy a few feet away, but bringing her a clean dress from home and taking her down to the river to wash the bloody one. How calm he’d been about the whole thing, how they never spoke of it, until, slowly, she forgot, burying it so deeply that it manifested in her hesitation to kill the rabbit, a hesitation that faded to the unspeakable— _ relish.  _

Her father was right: she was a killer. Worse, she enjoyed it. The thrill of waiting to catch the rabbit, the hunger to have its life in her grasp. At the time she assumed she wanted to keep it, but hindsight told her otherwise. 

He seemed to sense the realization in her. 

Her voice came out barely above a whisper, but he heard her still. “I forgot.” 

“I know.” His thumb rubbed slow circles on her hand. “My blood already courses through your veins, the blood of a hunter, not of prey. It’s a gift, Little Wolf, it’s a gift my father gave to me that now I can give to you. I’m stronger than he was, and you’ll be even stronger than me—you’ll be  _ powerful _ . More powerful than either of us.”

She heard herself speak distantly. A woman needed power in a world that tried to keep her powerless, in a world where a woman could be sold to a man she didn’t love. “More powerful?” Her fingers gripped onto his tightly. “Powerful enough to marry whoever I wanted?”

Her father’s serious dark eyes bore into her. His lips twisted into a snarl. “You won’t have to marry Adrian’s whelp, if that's what you’re thinking. You won’t be forced to marry anyone.”

Valerie resolutely braced herself, then reached up to where the ties of her crimson cloak rested against the hollow of her throat and undid them with only slightly shaking fingers. The fabric pooled about her waist and hips like a bloody tide hugging a shoreline. She turned her head as she drug down the collar of her dress to expose her neck and shoulder fully, baring unmarred milky flesh. “Do it quickly so we can run. No one will see if you do it here.” 

Pleasant surprise and joyful disbelief warred to be the most prominent expression her father wore, then pride and satisfaction. “I’ll do it quickly,” he promised, getting up eagerly. He crossed the distance between them and took her into his arms as he always had, holding her close. He kissed the top of her blonde head, then gently bent her neck to the side, brushing aside the long strands of her corn-silk pale hair. “The pain won’t last, and the marks will fade after your first transformation,” he murmured. He lowered his own head so that his lips hovered over her unbroken skin. 

Something made her tremble, but she didn’t change her mind. “Do it,” she whispered. “A wolf belongs to no man, father. Wolves belong to themselves. That’s what I want. To belong to myself.”

He paused a hair's-breadth away. “You’ll belong to the moon and the night, too, but they also belong to you. They’ll make you powerful. You’ll have your pick of men, if you like, or no men at all.”

He pressed his lips against her shoulder, and she forced herself not to flinch. She felt them draw back from his teeth, then a split-second lance of discomfort as his teeth made contact. His incisors, longer than the rest, punctured her first, making her gasp softly from the pinprick of pain. Rather than tearing into her, he kept the bite loose, no more than a nip, careful to control the strength of his jaws. His mouth gripped her shoulder lightly, every single tooth feeling like a small needle. Blood welled up instantly, running past his lips in scarlet rivulets. He cradled her to his chest as he gently prised himself free without worsening the wound. “It’s done.”

Valerie turned her head to look up at him. “How soon..?”

He tenderly swept a few straw wisps of hair away from her forehead. “You’ll transform for the first time tonight, but your wolf’s powers will start coming to you every hour that leads up to it. Already you’ll be stronger than the average woman in our village. After an hour, you’ll be stronger than all of the men. After that, your power will only grow, and strength is the least of them.”

Her father righted her dress so that it once more covered her shoulder. His bite had already stopped bleeding. “Is there anything you’d like to take with you?” 

She shook her head slowly. “No.”

Her father nodded in approval. “Just as well. Going back to Daggerhorn for anything would be risky.” He reached down for her cloak and brought it up around her shoulders again, tying it off at her throat. He then leaned forward and kissed her forehead. “Let me get my cloak.”

He rose to his feet and made his way across the room, grabbing a black cloak. As he donned it, the blade of an ax chopped through the door—once, twice—then the door burst open to reveal Peter, who charged in wielding the ax. 

Valerie leapt to her feet, spinning to face him. “Peter no! No, you can’t kill him, he’s my father!”

Noticing her, he slid in between her and her father. “He’s the Wolf, Valerie, he’s a monster, a devil. He has to die.”

She shook her head furiously as tears came to her eyes. “No, you don’t understand—”

He glanced over his shoulder at her as he paced around her father, who followed his movements with narrowed eyes. “I know you’re afraid, but you don’t have to be. I’ll protect you.”

He suddenly rushed at her father, ax raised. “You’re not so terrifying when the sun is up, beast.”

Valerie screamed, expecting his head to be split open, but the blade never hit its mark. Her father caught it in one hand, holding Peter off easily. He smirked. “How would you know how dangerous I can be?” His eyes flashed amber. 

Peter grunted, pulling back to strike at him again. An odd sensation broke over Valerie like an egg being cracked over her head, followed by a sense of vertigo that overtook her. A moment later she found herself shivering uncontrollably. With a snarl as a wave of vermilion rage washed over her vision, she barely registered her actions as she reached forward to grab him, her nails somehow longer than before, sharper. As her father blocked a second blow of the ax, her elongated nails sliced through the thin flesh of Peter’s neck. He sucked in a startled breath as blood immediately spurted from the wound. He dropped the ax with a clatter, clapping a hand over his severed artery as he turned to her with shock written across his face. 

The rage vanished in a second as horror stole over her features—horror at having struck Peter, horror at  _ liking it _ as part of her reveled in the tear of flesh, in the scent of his blood, hot and fresh, in the gallop of his breakneck pulse, which she could now somehow hear as clear as a bell. In fact, she could hear  _ all _ of their individual heartbeats, could even get their positions relative to herself from the sound. “Oh god Peter.” Her bloody hand covered her mouth. “Why did you have to do it?” 

Unbidden, her tongue darted out to lick up a few blood drops staining her fingers. 

“Valerie.” He gave a shuddering gasp. “How?” 

Her father stepped forward with a smirk firmly in place. “You humans could never understand. The lone wolf dies, but the pack survives.” He looked pointedly at Valerie as she stared down at her once lover in detached fascination, unable to tear her gaze away from the gushing blood still escaping around his fingers. 

Peter caught the look, and his own look of horror and anguish came over him. “No.” He shook his head furiously. “No! Not her. She couldn’t—she wouldn’t—she’s not like you, she—”

“She’s my blood, and now—my pack.”

Unbeknownst to Valerie, her eyes flashed amber at that moment. She knelt down, her lip drawing back over abnormally large incisors—for a human, anyway. Without even thinking, she wrenched Peter’s hand away from his wound with no resistance as she instantly overpowered him. Immediately more blood welled up. Valerie heard a ringing in her ears as she raised her head to look into her father’s eyes. They glinted again, brown overlaid with amber. “Do it,” he said simply. “Finish it so we can leave this place before someone else comes along.”

Valerie bit her lip, unintentionally drawing blood, glancing down at a man she still loved. “I love you, Peter,” she whispered, “You’re the only man I’ve ever loved. But I have to, for the good of the pack. For  _ myself _ . I’ll never be free here, tied down either to some man who doesn’t love me, or some man who would ask me to abandon my pack.” 

“He killed your sister,” he reminded her, barely conscious, “he scarred your mother.”

Valerie felt her face twist. “I’ve loved her all my life, but she betrayed him.” A pained expression flitted briefly over her features. “Lucie was an accident. I can’t blame him for that.” 

Without preamble, she lunged forward, her teeth sinking into the soft, unprotected skin of his throat. A haze settled on her mind as the taste of his blood burst over her tongue. He gurgled, thrashing momentarily, but his movements quickly stilled. Exerting so much energy and movement with a nick in his carotid, not to mention a throat ripped cleanly open, drained what little life lingered within him. Tears slipped down her cheeks as her own heartbreak intermingled with her still-simmering rage and the unfamiliar feeling of bloodlust. She came away from him with blood smattering her cheeks and completely covering the tip of her nose, her mouth, and her chin. 

As she hunched over Peter's rapidly cooling body, her father brought over a scrap of cloth and her grandmother’s washbasin. The water turned red as she washed away the blood on her face and hand, glancing every once in a while at Peter’s sightless eyes.  _ How could she have done this? Had she ever really known herself? _ And yet the longer she tasted the sweet tang of his blood on her tongue—thick, hot, rich—she became aware of a simple fact with haunting clarity: she’d known all along. The signs had been there—Collin, the rabbit, her wildness—but she’d lied to herself about her true nature.  _ This _ was her inheritance. Not a life living as prey, but a life spent being one with the dark, with the dizzying taste of blood on her tongue and the thrill of the hunt singing in her veins. 

The Wolf’s daughter, now the Wolf. 

Her father delicately pulled her to her feet, then drew her into a loving embrace. “Thank you,” he whispered. 

She buried her face into his chest. “I love you, Papa.” She turned her tear-stained face to look into his gleaming amber eyes, her own eyes matching them. “The lone wolf dies, but the pack survives.”

…

  
  
  
  



End file.
